How-to Survive Alone at Sea for 133 Days

This week I was in Pensacola, Florida where I went through the Air Force’s Water Survival course. From the Air Force fact sheet, “The course centers it’s training on aircrews, which utilize parachuting as the primary means of escape. Instruction includes initial academic training, parachute equipment procedures, parachute drag training, post egress and recovery training which includes a deep water landing, and a one to two hour raft familiarization exercise.” Basically, I learned what to do if I ever have to jump out of a plane and parachute into the ocean.

One of the most memorable parts of the course dealt with the story of a Chinese sailor in WWII, named Poon Lim, who survived alone in a life raft for 133 days in the Atlantic after his ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat. The fact that he survived for so long is incredible enough, but what struck me the most was the fact that at the time of his rescue, after more than four months on a 8 ft. square raft, he was quite healthy, having lost only 20lbs and walking away under his own strength. Not only did he live, he lived well!

Aside from the inevitable, “What would I have done?” question, there are a few lessons in skilled living I took away from this incredible survival story:

Things Will Go Wrong, Accept It – I’m sure Lim didn’t wake up that day expecting to get hit by a torpedo, but the unexpected happened and he found himself in a mess. Lim could have easily given up, bitter and hopeless, but he accepted that the world around him had fallen apart and dealt with it.

No matter how well we plan for the future bad things are going to happen, things we are unable to predict. Some people handle these life disasters well, coming out stronger at the other end. Others are completely knocked out, unable to recover. Learn what separates these two types of people and change your life accordingly.

Learn to Adapt – After two hours floating in the sea Lim found a small life raft and climbed aboard onto what would become his new home. On the raft were some biscuits, water, flares and an electric torch. Lim was now alone in the middle of the Atlantic with very few supplies, a situation that could leave many hopeless, but Lim chose to adapt to his new environment.

Poon stayed in shape by swimming laps around his raft, keeping his eyes above water at all times scanning for sharks. He gave himself small rations of biscuits and water each day, but as the supplies ran low he had to change his survival plan.

He used the canvas covering his life jacket to collect rainwater and bent a piece of wire in his electric torch to form a hook to catch fish, using his last pieces of biscuit as bate and a hemp rope as the line. He pried a nail from a plank in the raft to catch larger fish and cut up his empty biscuit tin to make a knife. Lim had very few resources, but he adapted and this enabled him to survive.

Focus On What You Can Control – It would have been easy for Lim to lie on his raft all day thinking about when a rescue boat would pick him up, what he could do if he had more supplies or why this had all happened to him in the first place, but these things were outside his control. Instead Lim focused on the things he could control like catching fish, staying as healthy as possible, keeping his raft clean, etc. In doing so he kept himself occupied and strengthened his will to live.

Know Your Weaknesses and Deal With Them – Lim was a poor swimmer so he would often tie a rope around his wrist connecting him to the raft. Rather than accepting this weakness and moving on, Lim instead swam daily, gradually turning his weakness into a strength.

Being able to identify your weaknesses is much harder than it seems. First, we rarely want to accept that we have weaknesses in the first place and second, its often hard for us to see them even if we want to. Having close friends and mentors in your life to point out your blind spots is a key part of skilled living. Only when your weaknesses are identified do you then have a chance to deal with them.

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